Indigenous issues

With the country facing significant and unpredictable headwinds going into another federal election year, the 2019 Alternative Federal Budget (AFB) shows that Canada can boost competitiveness and encourage innovation by investing in people, not by giving corporations more tax cuts.

Indigenous peoples have a troubled relationship with the systems that have been imposed by settler colonial populations. The imposition of education through the residential school system was devastating to Indigenous peoples, with the legacy living on in Canada’s child welfare system. Part of ending this cycle of the removal of children means providing culturally relevant and quality child care.

VANCOUVER — British Columbia’s Mount Polley mining disaster bears remarkable similarities to a catastrophe at a Brazilian mine the next year and points to the strong possibility of more environmental calamities ahead, warns a new report that examines both events.

The Mount Polley disaster took place in August 2014, when the dam holding toxic waste from the copper and gold mine collapsed, creating the largest environmental disaster in Canada’s mining history.
In November of the following year, the largest mine disaster in Latin American history took place in Mariana, Brazil, when an even larger reservoir of waste collapsed at the Samarco iron mine.

For First Nations peoples living in rural and remote areas, accessing diagnostic health services and treatment often requires traveling long distances and, in some cases, relocating to an urban centre for a few weeks, months, or at times, permanently.
“Living in the City: Documenting the Lived Experiences of the Island Lake Anishininiew” highlights the realities of 30 First Nations community members experiencing medical relocation and offers recommendations from people with lived experience.

This is a study of the previous provincial government’s policy approach to Community Economic Development (CED). Manitoba at the time was described as a leader in CED. In contrast to the prevailing neoliberalizing winds, “social demo­cratic governments (in Quebec and Manitoba) have been important promoters of CED/Social Economy” (Loxley, Silver and Sexmith, 2007; see also Sheldrick & Warkentin 2007).

Here at the CCPA, we're constantly thinking about what needs to change in our lives, our economy and our ways of governing to make society more equitable, and life more fulfilling, for the greatest number of people. Broadly speaking, you could say our mandate is transition, the theme of this summer edition of the Monitor. By transition we mean a fair and just progression from today's extractives-based, exhausting and unequal economy to a more sustainable, pro-worker and frankly more human future.

Food insecurity is a pressing problem for thousands of Indigenous people living in remote reserves in the North of Manitoba. The new CCPA Manitoba report Harnessing the Potential of Social Enterprise in Garden Hill First Nation explores in-depth the themes around food insecurity: people’s incomes and spending on food, health issues related to food consumption and traditional food culture. It also suggests ways to increase food accessibility and affordability through local efforts and appropriate public policies.